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Archive for the ‘neuroscience’ category: Page 886

Jan 2, 2017

Scientists find new path in brain to ease depression

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

In recent research published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, Northwestern Medicine scientists identified a new pathway in the brain that can be manipulated to alleviate depression.

The pathway offers a promising new target for developing a drug that could be effective in individuals for whom other antidepressants have failed.

New antidepressant options are important because a significant number of patients don’t adequately improve with currently available antidepressant drugs.

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Jan 2, 2017

Slime Mold Doesn’t Have A Brain But Researchers Say It Can Learn And Teach

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Slime mold, a unicellular organism living in forest litter, offers a curious case of learning without a brain. This blob-like creeping organism learns from experience and imparts the knowledge to peers.

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Jan 2, 2017

America’s refusal to embrace gene editing could start the next Cold War

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, cyborgs, employment, genetics, military, neuroscience, transhumanism

New version of this out: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/01/02/americas-r…-cold-war/ #transhumanism #biohacking


Unlike other epic scientific advances…the immediate effect of genetic editing technology is not dangerous. Yet, it stands to be just as divisive to humans as the 70-year proliferation of nuclear weaponry.

The playing field of geopolitics is pretty simple: If China or another country vows to increase its children’s intelligence via genetic editing, and America chooses to remain “au naturel” because they insist that’s how God made them, a conflict species-deep will quickly arise.

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Jan 2, 2017

Regenerative Medicine: Scientists Have Successfully Engineered Functioning Human Nerves

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

In a breakthrough for regenerative medicine, scientists have grown intestinal tissues with functional nerves in a laboratory setup using human pluripotent stem cells. The synthesized tissue was used to study Hirschsprung’s disease, a congenital condition where nerve cells are missing from the colon, causing complications in passing stool. The research is detailed in Nature Medicine.

A pluripotent stem cell is a precursor cell to all the other types of cells in the body. In a petri dish, the stem cells were treated in a biochemical bath that triggered the formation into intestinal tissue. The novel part of the study was the construction of a nervous system on the intestinal organoid. The researchers manipulated neural crest cells to grow a system of nerves. By putting together the neural crest cells and the intestinal tissue at the exact time, they successfully grew together into a complex functional system.

The tissues were transplanted into mice. They worked successfully and showed a structure “remarkably similar” to that of a natural human intestine.

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Dec 30, 2016

Banks are using mind reading technology to interview graduates

Posted by in categories: business, finance, neuroscience

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Every business is becoming a technology business and nowhere is that truer than in the financial services industry, now as banks try to compete with start ups and established technology companies for tech talent they could find themselves getting into warm water…

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Dec 29, 2016

Immune cells in covering of brain discovered; may play critical role in battling neurological diseases

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

This could be a huge deal, a game changer even.

Definitely research to follow closely.


A composite image showing newly discovered immune cells in the brain (credit: Sachin Gadani | University of Virginia School of Medicine)

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Dec 29, 2016

Portrait of the artist may help diagnosis of brain diseases

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Some of the most famous artists in history may have left subtle clues to brain disease in their work, scientists have found.

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Dec 29, 2016

Cells dripped into brain help fight a deadly cancer

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

A man with deadly brain cancer that had spread to his spine saw his tumors shrink and, for a time, completely vanish after a novel treatment to help his immune system attack his disease — another first in this promising field.

The type of immunotherapy that 50-year-old Richard Grady received already has helped some people with blood cancers such as leukemia. But the way he was given it is new, and may allow its use not just for brain tumors but also other cancers that can spread, such as breast and lung.

Grady was the first person to get the treatment dripped through a tube into a space in the brain where spinal fluid is made, sending it down the path the cancer traveled to his spine.

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Dec 29, 2016

Novel Insights Into Neuronal Activity-Dependent Gene Expression

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Summary: A new study explores how neural activity influences CREB dynamics.

Source: Osaka University.

Neuronal activity mediates the formation of neuronal circuits in the cerebral cortex. These processes are regulated by the transcription factor CREB, which regulates gene expression in neuronal activity-dependent processes. Neuronal activity enhances CREB-mediated transcription but the mechanisms remain unclear. CREB binds to a cAMP response element (CRE) in the promoter region of its target genes. Assembly and disassembly of CREB-CRE interactions control spatiotemporal gene expression in the nucleus. However, how CREB interacts with CRE in activity-dependent mechanisms is not known.

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Dec 27, 2016

Harvard May Have Pinpointed the Source of Human Consciousness

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

In Brief

  • A study of 36 patients with brainstem lesions revealed that the majority of those in comas had damage in a specific area of the brainstem, while most conscious patients did not.
  • The identification of the areas of the brain responsible for consciousness could lead to new treatment options for patients in comas or vegetative states.

Human consciousness has been defined as awareness, sentience, a person’s ability to experience and feel, but despite the important role it plays in our lives and making us who we are, we actually know very little about how consciousness works.

Scientists currently believe that consciousness is composed of two components: arousal and awareness. The first is regulated by the brainstem, but the physical origins of the latter were always a mystery. Now, a team of researchers at Harvard think they may have discovered the regions of the brain that work with the brainstem to maintain consciousness.

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